by Damien Love
“All ready?” Kingdom said. Without waiting for an answer she threw them rocketing forward, smashing through the garage doors. Small machines crunched under their wheels and bounced off the windshield. Then they were on the main driveway. As they approached Harry’s ruined car, Kingdom accelerated. The woozy life-sizer turned weakly and was knocked sideways, leaving a dent in the hood. Harry extricated himself from the other car and clambered in.
“Pleased to meet you,” he puffed at Kingdom as he squeezed in beside Alex. “Nice motor.”
“Shame we had to give them that painting.” Alex’s grandfather sighed grimly, as they headed for the open gates.
“Ah, but we didn’t,” Kingdom said cheerily as the car shot out onto rough country road.
“Eh?”
“The painting we gave up was a decoy,” she said. “Bait. When we heard about the first paintings being stolen, I had a copy made. I took the real painting out of the frame and replaced it. So that’s what they have: a fine old frame, holding a useless new forgery. The real painting’s rolled up in here.” She patted the sword sheath propped beside her leg and changed gear.
“What an entirely devious woman,” Alex’s grandfather said. “We’re absolutely delighted to make your acquaintance, aren’t we, Alex? Alex?”
For a moment, Alex said nothing. He was utterly drained by the narrowness of the escape, shaking from the power he had finally unleashed, and still unsure about quite how he had done it. The Kenzie connection was certain, but it perplexed him. But, for the moment, he was far more concerned with the other idea he had just finished putting together.
“It’s not,” he panted.
“Eh?” His grandfather turned.
“I’ve worked it out,” Alex said bleakly. “What Harry tried to tell us. It’s not. I think he meant it’s not the paintings. It’s not the paintings they’re after, Grandad. Right, Harry?”
“Aw, crumbs.” Harry’s face fell. “Lad’s right. I’ve just remembered.”
“What?” the old man said. “Not with you.”
Alex looked at Harry. They spoke in unison:
“It’s the frames.”
XXIX.
GET THE PICTURE
“An that’s ’ow I managed to grab back the painting I rescued.”
Harry had been going over his story while the car tore eastward. They had joined a flat, busy highway.
“They were taking the frames apart,” Harry went on. “They’d chucked the painting aside. Then, lessee . . . Yeah, they were touching pieces of the frames against rocks, like dowsing sticks. All the broken rocks. The whatchamacallit, pulpit. Chanting, low. Yeah, an’ that’s when the glowing started.”
The Rolls growled contentedly. Dogs snored. The unconscious Metz made a small, unhappy sound deep in his throat.
“The paintings don’t add together to reveal where the Shadow Gate is,” Alex said. “They are the Shadow Gate. The frames are, anyway. I think the gate was an actual wooden structure the sorcerer made. Just like with the golem’s tablet: you need the tablet to hold the power or . . . reach the power; the object is part of the magic. I think the sorcerer made the gate as part of his . . . spell. Then it was dismantled and the pieces were disguised as all these frames and scattered all over the place. That’s why they needed to steal the physical objects. That’s why it’s not always been the same eleven paintings on the list, like Evelyn said—they’ve sometimes switched the frames to different paintings. And that’s why the robots kept coming when you were going to slash the canvas, Grandad, but stopped when I was going to burn the frame. Well? What do you reckon? Are you all right, Grandad?”
Alex’s grandfather sat repeatedly clenching his left hand, then stretching it wide, wiggling the fingers. He looked up and smiled.
“Never better. Although, I feel a little embarrassed at not putting that together myself. I think you’re right, Alex. Seems rather obvious now you say it. And I just gave them one of the frames they needed. Old fool. Well, regardless, our immediate job remains the same: we have to get to the final painting—the final frame—before they do. Evelyn?”
“I have to make a phone call,” Kingdom said. She pulled into a large and depressing-looking service station. While she stepped out and got on her phone, Alex’s grandfather and Harry disappeared toward the shopping area.
The dogs grew alert as Metz groaned again. His eyes opened. He sat staring, trying to get his bearings, and traced a finger gently over the fresh wound on his neck.
“You okay?” Alex asked.
“Like coming back to life,” Metz croaked, then smiled. “And what is happening out in the world, young man?” The dogs stared at him curiously.
“Evelyn’s finding out about the last painting,” Alex said. He gestured out the window. “Or trying to, anyway.”
Kingdom was making animated, frustrated gestures in the rain, clearly in a heated argument with whoever she was speaking to over the phone. She clutched her head, then bent double. A few moments later, she killed the call, sat back behind the wheel, and let out a small but heartfelt scream through clenched teeth.
“Infuriating old duffer,” she said. “Sounded about two hundred years old.”
“Uh, did you . . . find out?” Alex asked. “What the painting is?”
“Not yet. Honestly, it was like pulling teeth. Like he was doing me a favor. With a lot about ‘the protocols, young lady, the protocols.’ But he told me where it is. Staatsgalerie museum, in Stuttgart.” She checked the time. “He’s asked to meet us there. We should just make it before they close. Oh, hello, Phil. Good to have you back with us. How are you feeling?”
“Weak but well,” he said. “Getting stronger.”
Alex was happy to note Metz seemed calmer, more assured. His grandfather and Harry reappeared. The old man clutched a bulging paper bag that turned out to contain chocolate-coated marshmallows. Harry brandished two cheap new phones, handing one to Alex.
“Harry tells me you can put the something-or-other from your old phone into this new one,” Alex’s grandfather said through a full mouth.
“Just need to find a place to charge ’em,” Harry muttered.
“Oh,” Kingdom said. “I had a couple of outlets added to the dashboard.”
“You modified a Silver Phantom?” Harry gasped. “That’s sacrilege. But ’andy.”
Alex’s grandfather fished a new road map from his pocket and folded it to show a particular area. “Could you mark where your ruined old Castle Boll is?” he said, offering Kingdom the map and a pen. She hunted around, made a spot, and handed it back.
“And here’s the Kandel, where our pulpit collapsed,” Alex’s grandfather said, adding another dot. “They’re around, ah, twenty-two miles apart, as the crow flies.” Using the blunt edge of a blade from his Swiss Army knife as a ruler, the old man drew a diagonal between the two points. They all crowded forward, staring down at it, as if something might become clear. The enigmatic line glistened blackly across the landscape.
“Clear as mud,” Alex’s grandfather eventually said. “So, Evelyn. Do we know where we’re going?”
“Stuttgart,” she said, starting the engine. “Staatsgalerie.”
“Oh, lucky us.” The old man hummed happily, folding the map away.
As the car moved into traffic, they fell silent, everyone following their own thoughts. Alex left his new phone charging and leaned against the window.
He considered what he had done at the château—not only calling up the blast of power but directing it just as he had wanted. Protecting them. It had exhausted him to the point where he could barely stand, but he had done it, and he had succeeded in making the connection faster than ever, even though it had taken more effort. His technique was working. He could learn more, he was sure. For the first time, he felt they had something on their side.
He jumped when his grandfather suddenly spoke.
>
“And . . . we’re back in Germany . . . now.”
Alex hadn’t realized he’d been dozing. He opened his eyes to find they were crossing a huge concrete bridge spanning a wide bend of river. The landscape on the other side seemed much the same.
Soon they were rolling through a town in a shallow valley, the streets looking sleepy as another afternoon wore itself out. The pastel-colored walls and red-tiled roofs gave the place a toy town look that reminded Alex of a little wooden village that had accompanied a train set his grandfather had bought him as a kid.
He remembered how he had enjoyed laying out the houses and shops in different arrangements as much as he had setting the engine snaking through them, using blankets and cushions and books to create a bumpy landscape of hills and tunnels around the tracks. Building worlds on his bedroom floor. He settled sleepily into the memory, oddly comforted by it.
He hadn’t thought about it since he was a little kid. He’d played with it a lot back then, during the years when he’d had his endless appointments with doctors and hospitals, running tests, taking blood, because his mother was constantly worried about how small he was. By the time he’d started school, he still only looked about three years old, but he’d finally taken a sudden spurt and . . .
Alex sat bolt upright. A thought had dropped onto the surface of his mind, hard as a diamond. It took a few panicking seconds before he could whisper the words.
“It’s in me.”
“Hmmm?” his grandfather murmured.
“Stop,” Alex said. “I need to get out.”
“What?” Kingdom spoke over her shoulder. “We don’t really have time—” She broke off as she caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “Hang on.”
Alex was out of the car before it stopped. He ran along the grass verge, staggered, then dropped to his knees. A moment later, his grandfather’s shadow fell across him.
“It’s in me,” Alex said, staring at the ground. “In my blood. Isn’t it? The whole thing you were talking about: not aging properly, being frozen for years without changing, then suddenly growing years older all at once. It’s what was going on when I was a kid, not growing, all that time with the doctors. You were always there, I remember. You were always watching. You knew what was happening. It’s in me! It’s been . . . passed down.”
“Ah.” His grandfather hesitated, made a painful wince, then sat sadly by his side. “Well . . . maybe, Alex. But, then, maybe not. Your father, you see, when he was born, exactly the same thing happened. He was tiny as an infant, for years. But then, once he reached around nine, it all seemed to work out. Same as you, Alex. Everything started running normally. So there’s every reason to believe that will be the case with you. You know: you’re one more step removed from the source, so whatever inherited effects there are will be much weaker, diluted. If there are any inherited effects at all.”
“But my dad . . .” Not for the first time, Alex found a racing new landscape of thoughts opening and struggled to keep track. “Dad was still quite young when he died. Maybe if he’d lived longer, it might have started in him again, like it did with you.”
“Well,” his grandfather said after a long pause. “We’ll never know. But, Alex, the potion, it’s not just a question of biology and chemistry. It also required a magical element to ignite it. And you’ve not had that. But, yes: it may be lying dormant in you. That’s perhaps what the golem’s tablet responded to in you, actually. It’s maybe why it responded when your blood touched it. It’s two different types of magic being brought together that shouldn’t have been. Alex, I— I’m sorry. I should have never started any of this, son. I should never have thought I could have a fam— Well, I’m sorry, that’s all. But here we are.”
A heavy silence fell between them.
“Those deaths you talked about,” Alex said after a while. “That’s part of what’s in me, too. In my blood. Those deaths. Murders.”
“Alex. Listen very carefully. This is our history, but it wasn’t our choice, and it’s certainly not your fault. It’s good to know the history, but you’re not chained to it, son.”
“No. I know.” Alex paused. Amid his jittering jumble of thoughts, two more memories suddenly linked up. “There’s nothing left of the victims’ bodies, you said. The flower, the leaf, it absorbs everything . . . That newspaper story I asked you about in Harry’s office, about the railway worker that went missing from the train. They just found his uniform in a heap. Was that . . . ?”
“Ah, I reckon so, Alex. I clipped that story. I’ve tried to keep track over the years.”
“I think it’s happened again,” Alex whispered. “The climbers we met on the Kandel. I think I found their clothes just lying . . .”
The old man opened his mouth, but no words came. His head fell forward. “All five?” he finally managed.
Alex nodded.
“So soon,” his grandfather said after a moment. “So many. That’s much faster than ever before. There used to be years between . . .” He let the thought drift into silence.
“How many?” Alex said.
“How many?”
“Lives. Deaths. In the . . . potion. I mean, before you knew and went away from him. While you were still taking it.”
“I don’t know, son.” The old man still sat with his head bowed.
“Grandad. It’s not your fault. It’s all just . . . it’s horrible.”
“That it is, Alex.” His grandfather patted his arm. “That it is.” He looked up. “And that’s all the more reason for us to keep going and try to stop it. If you can.”
Alex looked around, blinking. He saw Metz watching them from the back of the Rolls. Beyond the car, a castle ruin rose starkly on a hill above the village roofs, a single tower poking up like a crumbling finger thrust accusingly at the heavens. It wasn’t the ruined castle Kingdom and Metz had talked about, he knew, but it seemed a menacing premonition and intensified the chill in his blood. His grandfather noticed him staring at it.
“Oh, I do love a derelict castle,” the old man said, forcing cheer into his voice. Then he frowned. “Well, most of the time. Now. We really should get moving. Alex?”
Alex took a breath. He felt history pressing at his back. But the only way to go was forward.
“Yeah.”
“Good man.”
* * *
• • •
ALEX’S GRANDFATHER CHECKED his wristwatch as they hit the outskirts of Stuttgart. “Almost four thirty. Sunset’s around half past eight. Then it’s officially Walpurgisnacht. Although midnight will be the center of it all, of course. That will be when they’re hoping to open the gate and conduct whatever madness they’re up to.” He brooded darkly then shot Alex a bright smile. “Gives us almost eight hours. That’s loads of time.”
Alex watched the stately city passing behind the raindrops on his window. Cars nudging one another, a police car, a hearse, tourist coaches. People on the streets. Eventually, Kingdom slowed, searching for a place to park.
“Here we are,” Alex’s grandfather said. “The Staatsgalerie. It used to be just the old museum, Alex.” The old man pointed out a stern, classical-looking building across the road. “They added this extension a few years ago.”
The newer structure looked as if its designer had started to build an imposing fortress, but at the last minute a child had snuck in and scribbled happily over the plans with crayons.
For the most part it was a solid, somber construction of heavy-looking sandstone in tones matching the old museum. But here and there were sudden wild angles, changes in level, curves and incongruous splashes of color. Big, friendly plastic tubes of bright pink and blue marked stairs and ramps that led up from the street to the entrance, where the main facade was punctured by a huge, undulating curtain of glass in a Day-Glo-green frame, as if the wall had melted.
Harry helped Metz out. Metz tested
his leg, tentatively putting weight on it.
“’Ere you go, lean on me,” Harry said, offering an arm.
Metz considered him carefully, then accepted. “Thank you. My leg is better but still just a little weak.”
“We won’t be long,” Kingdom cooed gently to her dogs. She wound down her window and closed the car door. “I have a feeling that’s our man,” she added sourly, nodding to the entrance.
A small, thin, elderly figure in a shabby charcoal suit and black raincoat stood by the glass wall, stooped beneath a huge black golf umbrella. His bald gray head was encircled by a white fuzz that suggested his barber was either wildly imaginative or long past caring. But, when they got up to join him, Alex saw his black eyes were sharp and watchful. The man studied them impatiently.
“Herr Morgenstern?” Kingdom said, holding out her hand. “Evelyn Kingdom, president of the Fishing Club. We spoke on the phone.”
The birdlike little lawyer made a show of turning away, lifting his runny red nose, and staring haughtily at the sky, as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Really?” Kingdom muttered. She traced a finger delicately over one eyebrow as if a migraine was taking root there. “Okay: Schattentor.”
“The museum closes in twenty minutes.” The man spoke in a high, brittle bark. He produced a large fob watch on a tarnished chain and shook it under Kingdom’s chin. “You have no conception of the value of my time. Who are all these people?” He flourished a pale hand without looking at them.
“They’re with me. I’m the president.”
“You are a very rude young woman, is what you are. But I have no time for this. Come.”
“Would you mind if we borrowed your umbrella?” Alex’s grandfather said.
Morgenstern looked horrified. He stepped toward the old man and drew himself to his full height, his dribbling nose now level with Alex’s grandfather’s chest.
“If you have the impoliteness even to ask, I don’t see how I can refuse.”
“Thaaank you. We’ll take good care of it.” The old man rolled the umbrella up tightly, then proffered it to Metz. “Not as good as a proper walking stick. But close enough.” Metz took it and gave the air a small, testing swipe before leaning on it like a cane.